Staff Or Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Recommendation Algorithm (AI)

TL;DR

Staff Machine Learning Engineer (Recommendation Algorithm): Driving the evolution of the recommendation ecosystem and integrating Foundation Models and LLMs into the product with an accent on scalable ranking systems and multi-task learning frameworks. Focus on designing low-latency ranking systems, mentoring senior talent, and optimizing user engagement and revenue growth.

Location: Tokyo, Japan (Visa sponsorship and overseas relocation support available)

Company

hirify.global is a global information and news discovery company utilizing unique machine-learning technology to deliver quality news to millions of users.

What you will do

• Define and drive the technical roadmap for vertical ranking, aligning ML initiatives with global business priorities.
• Lead the design and implementation of scalable, low-latency ranking systems and multi-task learning frameworks.
• Partner with Product and Business Directors to translate business objectives into technical requirements and measurable KPIs.
• Mentor junior to senior engineers and establish best practices for model lifecycle management (MLOps).
• Spearhead the adoption of SOTA techniques including LLM-based ranking, Reinforcement Learning, and Graph Neural Networks.
• Oversee complex A/B testing strategies and offline-to-online correlation analysis.

Requirements

• 5-10+ years (Staff) or 10+ years (Senior Staff) of experience in applied ML, focusing on large-scale recommendation systems, ranking, or computational advertising.
• Proven ability to decompose ambiguous business challenges into actionable technical workstreams.
• Mastery of deep learning architectures such as Transformers, MoE, and Embeddings in production environments at scale.
• Strong stakeholder management skills with the ability to influence both technical and non-technical audiences.
• Extensive experience designing and scaling complex ML pipelines from data ingestion to online inference.

Nice to have

• Contributions to the ML community via publications (KDD, RecSys, NeurIPS) or significant open-source work.
• Deep understanding of distributed computing frameworks like Spark and Ray.
• Experience with user growth loops, monetization strategies, and content platform economics.
• Experience working in multi-national tech companies.
• Professional working proficiency in Japanese.

Culture & Benefits

• Full healthcare and social insurance as required by Japanese labor law.
• Annual health checks.
• Visa sponsorship for eligible candidates.
• Overseas relocation support for eligible candidates.